PETITION PROBLEMS: Boulder’s Sugar Tax in Trouble

Boulder residents tried to pull a fast one with a local ballot initiative that seeks to raise taxes on drinks containing sugar, prompting a protest that was filed with the city Monday.

It seems the crusaders against Mother Earth’s natural ingredient neglected to add
TABOR language for the two-cent tax.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that the city attorney alerted the council to this problem, but they approved it for the ballot anyway.

City Attorney Tom Carr warned repeatedly that the petition was vulnerable legally because without TABOR language, any proposed tax is invalid, even if voters pass it. He advised the council not to add TABOR language when it set the ballot title, and they have rejected his opinion so far. They were primed to approve a title — including a TABOR provision — ahead of the Sept. 9 deadline.

Now that all of the statewide ballots have been filed with the Secretary of State’s office, we expect to see more problems emerge. Food and Water Watch, one of several out-of-state groups pushing for the anti-fracking measures, is notorious for its creativity in collecting ballot signatures of voters that don’t exist, or just turning in blank pages.

The anti-energy ballots just barely made the deadline Monday for filing, a strong signal that we will see problems when the signatures are actually examined.